In the first chapter of his 1998 autobiography called “You Gotta Love It, Baby,” Hot Rod Hundley recalls watching the Lakers get swept by the Utah Jazz in the Western Conference finals and not being very impressed.

“Kobe Bryant may be the greatest talent in the league after Michael Jordan, but he has a lot to learn about basketball,” wrote Hundley, then in the 24th year of what would be a 35-season run as Utah’s TV and radio broadcaster.

“Everything doesn’t have to be a show-biz move. Kobe tries to put on a show every time he has the ball and it hurts him and it hurts the team. But he’s young. The two years he played the Jazz in the playoffs (in ’97 and ’98) would have been his freshman and sophomore year in college. If he keeps working and is willing to learn, he could develop into something special.

“He has yet to prove it but he has an unbelievable talent. It’s frightening to think how good he could be.”

Flash forward to Wednesday in Milwaukee. By happenstance, Hundley was courtside with Joel Meyers describing the Lakers’ one-point overtime victory for KCAL-Channel 9 – where Bryant nailed a do-or-die fall-away shot at the buzzer that looked exactly like the one he missed at the end of regulation.

Twenty-four hours after Bryant scored 42 points with an injured finger in a win at Chicago, and immediatly after he hit the final two of a 39-point night against the Bucks, Meyers asked Hundley if he’d ever seen anyone like him.

“Never,” Hundley said on the air. “I keep telling ya, best player in the NBA, best player in the world. He’s a thinker, knows how to get away (from the defender), he knows how to get up high (on his shot). He did it. My man!”

Having all Thursday morning to relax in his room at the Ritz Carlton across from Central Park in New York City, pondering the performance of the Lakers star over the past four games while subbing for Stu Lantz on the Lakers’ TV crew, Hundley tried to bridge the two observations he made more than 10 years apart with some more perspective.

“I’ve never forgotten the first time I saw (former Lakers general manager) Jerry West after he drafted Kobe (in 1996) – and I’d never seen or heard of this 18-year-old kid – but Jerry said, `I’m telling you, one day he’ll be one of the top 10 players of all time,”‘ said the 75-year-old Hundley who, like West, was a former star at the University of West Virginia.

“And he’s right on the line with Kobe Bryant.”

No doubt someday, Bryant will have his jersey – No. 8, 24 or both – retired on the Staples Center wall next to Hundley’s No. 33. OK, so it was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s career that forced the Lakers to hang it up there when his career ended a quarter of a century after Hundley’s six-year NBA run, all with the Lakers, concluded in 1963.

The two years Hundley spent at Chick Hearn’s first real color man (1967-68 and ’68-’69) gave him a new perspective of NBA stars of that day, including former teammates West and Elgin Baylor.

The 3,000-plus games Hundley did as the voice of the Jazz before retiring at the end of last season gave him even more historical context, especially during the Jazz’s back-to-back NBA Finals losses to Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

“So now (radio analyst and former Laker) Mychal Thompson is asking me on this trip: Is Kobe better than Jordan?” Hundley said. “I think so. Kobe has been all business. He’s now a smart player and knows what he can do against certain players. He’s become a student of the game.

“No one is better in the world right now. LeBron James is a great talent, but he’s still a playground player. Kobe … he’d be a great coach someday if he wanted to be.”

A couple of years after his Lakers career, Hundley had a chance to be a coach.

He instead became a broadcaster, which led to him being inducted in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003 – the first former player to be enshrined into the broadcaster’s wing.

The expansion Seattle SuperSonics asked him to take a one-year, $17,000 deal in 1967. He asked for three years. Gene Klein, the San Diego Chargers owner who had the Seattle franchise, wouldn’t budge. Hundley turned it down to take $15,000 as Hearn’s sidekick on the Lakers’ TV-radio simulcast.

“I thought I could keep that job (with Chick) longer than I could keep a job up there (in Seattle),” Hundley said. “As it turned out, I lasted two years with Chick, and the guy they hired (Al Bianchi) lasted two years. But I made the right move.”

Hundley also thinks he made a wise decision coming out of retirement for this stretch of games while Lantz stays with his wife in San Diego as she recovers from ankle surgery.

But after Saturday’s stop in New Jersey and Sunday’s trip to Detroit, the man who has spent 48 years of his life associated with the NBA – but having never won a championship ring – gladly will return to his golf game in Arizona.

“I’ve had a lot of fun, even though I’ve had some problems with my timing being a little erratic. But you gotta remember, I haven’t been an analyst in 35 years, back with Chick,” said Hundley, a play-by-play man in Utah before he retired after the 2009 playoffs with another year left on his contract.

“I actually gotta give (commissioner) David Stern a call. I’m just trying to find out how many games I’ve got to broadcast this season to qualify for a ring (if the Lakers win the title). John Black (the team’s director of communications) said he’d look into it for me.”

Illustrating the power of a cause celebre

It has to be some kind of sign of the apocalypse: Stephen Colbert on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week.

You must neither be a card-carrying member of Colbert Nation nor a U.S. speed skating groupie to fully be in on what’s more than just another snarky put-on by the jokey host of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.

In doing what any great faux TV political pundit would do in a time of need – throw himself into a story and take all the credit the media will bestow upon him – Colbert has achieved more than just a running, slashed-tongue-in-cheek effort to raise sponsorship money for Americans skaters heading to Vancouver for the upcoming Winter Olympics.

SI’s annual sports media in review issue touches on the highs and lows of TV, books, the Internet and social networking from 2009, but the fact that Colbert viewers have kicked in nearly $300,000 to cover the amount promised by a Dutch bank before it went under shows there’s much more than pseudo truthiness in this cause.

Says Colbert in the issue about his new affinity for speed skaters: “They look like members of Blue Man Group, but beyond that there’s nothing comedic about speed skating. These are incredible athletes. My character isn’t ironically detached, he’s ironically a-ttached – things are important to him. And right now we’re here for speed skating.”

On Dan Patrick’s syndicated radio show Wednesday, Colbert also gave full fake disclosure of his exposure in the speed skating suit for the SI cover: “They actually just paint it on. All just latex. They dip you and then they apply the decals later. The great thing about Lycra is that it gives me the illusion of a physique.”

WHAT SMOKES

==Having secured of a coveted spot in the rotation for the first two rounds of CBS’ college basketball tournament coverage in March, Lakers radio play-by-play man Spero Dedes will team up with Greg Anthony to call Saturday’s UCLA-Notre Dame college basketball game for the network from South Bend, Ind., (11 a.m., Channel 2). Dedes will miss calling the Lakers game for KSPN-AM (710) on Saturday in New Jersey. In the latest episode of musical Laker broadcasters, Bill Macdonald will fill in this time. Dedes will be back for Sunday’s game in Detroit. “I’m really excited; it’s been in the works for awhile now and it finally worked out,” Dedes said from New York on Thursday about the CBS gig, a transition made easier Saturday by having Doug Mann, his Thousand Oaks-based stat man on the Lakers games, join him in South Bend. On Jan. 2, sandwiched between Lakers home games against Dallas and Sacramento, Dedes also will call the UCLA-Arizona game from Pauley Pavilion for CBS. The NCAA tournament work in late March could cause him to possibly miss a couple more Lakers broadcasts. “I’m just really fortunate the Lakers agreed to let me do it,” he said. “They’ve been very supportive.” Another assignment Dedes will have to miss this weekend is hosting the NFL Network’s Sunday morning studio show from Culver City. Fran Charles replaces him there.

WHAT CHOKES

==There was Erin Andrews – hair pulled back, wearing a smart-looking suit, dad there for moral support – in an L.A. courtroom this week telling a judge, “I’ve been embarrassed and my career has been ripped apart. I walk into a stadium and fans say obscene things to me.” Just to get it straight: She was talking about her reaction to having a man eventually found guilty for peeping on her through a hotel door, not addressing her appearance a couple months back in a GQ photo spread where she was in a skin-tight tank top with a grin on her face amidst a fake locker room of football players caked in mud, right?

==Congrats to anyone who claims first dibs on reporting on the passing of Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry, especially before he was pronounced dead Thursday morning in a Charlotte, N.C., hospital. At one point early Thursday, a blog called Dscriber.com reported Henry “was in a car accident that either killed him or not. It’s hard to tell based on Google, but news reports and blogs confirming his continued existence seem to be edging out those that are mourning his demise.” Sadly, that probably is the norm these days in how some determine fact from fiction.

Tom Hoffarth is a freelancer. He had been with the Daily News/Southern California News Group since 1992 as a general assignment sports reporter, columnist and specialist in the sports media. He has been honored by the Associated Press for sports columnists and honored by the Southern California Sports Broadcasters Association for his career work. His favorite sportscaster of all time: Vin Scully, for professional and personal reasons. He considers watching Zenyatta win the Breeders' Cup 2009 Classic to be the most memorable sporting event he has covered in his career. Go figure that.